What are your worst or weirdest experiences from a vendor hosting the viewings?

Grabs39

The first house we bought. The vendor was meant to show us around but was away so his parents came instead.  Unfortunately they only had a key for the back door, and the garden had high fences and locked gates.  I had to climb over the 6ft fence, go in the back door and through the house, to let everyone in the front!

trix-a-belle

Oh I love some of these

The 1st house I ever viewed I took a friend with me, the property was in a row of 3 that had all been recently refurbished & had a cellar access in the living room, my friend after ascertaining what it was jumped up and down on the hatch saying 'I bet there's dead people down there', yes I cringed & they were not invited to come along again.

Same house hunt, I looked at 3 houses in the same road on the same day, 2 of which were adjoining each other scheduled 1st & 2nd.
I arrived at the first house (which I subsequently bought) to catch the owners of the 2nd house stuffing their 2 large german shepherds in the back of their van ahead of the viewing & trying (& failing) to remove any trace of them. On viewing the house with the EA I found the under stair cloakroom was completely painted bright red with lots of sex pistols photos on the wall (forever referred to as the shrine ), 1 bedroom had a wall painted ultra violet & another had a hot pink wall.
I commiserated with the guy who bought it when he moved in a few months after me, he never got rid of the dog smell from the living room (despite it being a tiled floor).
He as a neighbour he gifted me some entertaining times & sold up not long before I did. (His kids had a party that got out of control while he was away resulting in an off duty plod visit on his return, we lived not far from the police hq so had lots living locally. His son who's bedroom wall adjoined mine woke me up more than once after coming back from clubbing, generally with company. & the tenants he rented it out to for a while who got a very yappy dog without his agreement & mostly ignored the poor thing, were very bad at darts as shown by the wall around the board & topped off their stay with the female having a 'friend' to stay while her partner was working away who got off his face on substances & tried to lock her in the house, resulting in her breaking out and making a midnight dash to one of the police who lived up the road & forensics taking evidence till 7am.)

Viewers rather than viewings; When selling that place I mostly left it to the estate agent but had to take a few last minute ones; One couple, they were disappointed it was in an estate setting (obvious from the photos, description and location). He just *had* to see in the loft as he wanted to store his business stock up there (no loft ladder due to the roof structure layout & no notice so had to drag a ladder out of the shed so he could see for all of 2 seconds to agree it would be a struggle to rack out to contain what he wanted despite me having explained its limitations & size, it was Le Mans 24 weekend so had been trying to keep it short to get back to the coverage). She wanted to knock down basically all the kitchen walls to make it bigger as she apparently needed an insane amount of worktop space for her baking (the oven was a small 2 shelf square job that could fit a maximum of 3 baking trays), 1 wall adjoined the understairs cupboard & had the consumer unit & all that important stuff on the other side of it. What they actually wanted was a quaint cottage in the countryside with large farmhouse kitchen.
Another family who's kids ran riot around the whole place from the first second they arrived, under no control & wrecked the bank in the garden by using it as a slide (turned out several of the families who brought their kids with them did that though didn't destroy it), i'm not sure the parents actually were able to take in anything about the house & perhaps needed to re-evaluate their viewing strategy to when the kids could be cared for by someone else or come separately.
The people who bought returned several times to measure rooms (despite having the dimensioned floor plan) & windows for curtains but didn't measure from the existing curtain poles which the knew were staying & fitted on battens which dictated the height. The kids thought they got everything that was in the house with the purchase (including my housemates fish tank) & the little lad thought he could have the master bedroom with the ensuite rather than his parents.

I once had a viewing with the owners, who were absolutely lovely but on seeing it felt the house layout could never work for me or be reworked to suit, where they clearly took a shine to me & despite me trying to move it along and leave swiftly to avoiding wasting anyone elses time were actively trying to talk me into buying it.

Another I enquired for further details about the 'brick outbuilding' as no size information or pictures but somewhat highly noted in the description, satellite view suggested it could be a decent size & I was looking for somewhere with a good size workshop room, to have the question brushed off by the EA and to 'come to the open day & see it for myself', I think the description implied it was a detached property also. The house was actually attached to the village hall which was the reasonably sized brick construction that was visible on the satellite view, the 'brick outbuilding' was barely more than an outdoor WC/coal shed/cupboard size.

On the flip side of viewings I once had a prospective lodger come to view when I was renting a room out who proceeded to burst into every other bedroom, the living room & dining room of the house, saying his parents would stay here when they came to visit, it was like a comedy skit. He was also quite disparaging of his current landlords during the viewing, he didn't get the room.

HRH_MUngo

When we were looking to buy in Spain, we viewed a village house where there was a (very) dead dog in the kitchen.

We didn't buy it!

pinkshoes

My best mate viewed (and bought) a house that was being sold due to divorce. The husband showing them around then decided to tell them his life story, how his wife had been cheating on him, all their heartbreak of being unable to conceive a child due to her being infertile and too old (!) etc... My mate said it was SO awkward.

Turns out the house she bought belonged to my husband's best mate! We had a good giggle about it as I filled her in on the actual truth which wasn't quite what he said to her! He is known for telling a few porkies...

Slithery

woahsoah said:

One guy was left alone in the kitchen, he removed the boiler cover and was "checking it". He also went looking for a ladder so he could get up into the loft.

What's wrong with that? Sounds like due diligence to me.

SDLT_Geek

HRH_MUngo said:

When we were looking to buy in Spain, we viewed a village house where there was a (very) dead dog in the kitchen.

We didn't buy it!

Was the dead dog in a bag for life?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2636903/updated-its-done-our-buyer-wants-to-bury-their-dead-dog-in-our-garden

Woolsery

HRH_MUngo said:

When we were looking to buy in Spain, we viewed a village house where there was a (very) dead dog in the kitchen.

We didn't buy it!

I wouldn't buy a dead dog either. Many live ones smell strongly enough!

Boffinman

I was thinking more a doggie bag....

themoomins

My ex and I went to view a house a few years ago which was so awkward. The vendors told us to feel at home and look around ourselves whilst they chilled on the sofa (but were obviously feeling very awkward too and didn't know what else to do with themselves!)

It was unbelievably uncomfortable, and when we were looking around the dining area of the living room they began chatting to us from the sofa as if we were visiting them as friends or family.  They were lovely people but four terribly socially awkward people in this context was just painful!

eileenfromplaistow

Forty odd years ago in Cambridgeshire, we looked at a house which had loads of wood panelling - painted brown. I really hate brown paint, but to cap that, when you looked out of the back window, just over the back fence was a colossal stone water tower! You couldn't miss it. When my husband mentioned it, the vendor sort of "jumped" and said oh that, after a while you don't know it's there.